Ask and you shall receive!

More than a few of the folks who are keeping up with our preparations have asked some really good questions:  How will you take showers? How will you educate the boys? Will you have wifi while you’re gone?   Be assured, we are quite comfortable on Dakota and have been living on her full-time for over a month.  That said, because we have not yet thrown off the dock lines permanently, we have had the luxury of a personal vehicle to take us anywhere we’d like to go on land (including to visit family and friends, do free laundry while we can and run a multitude of pre-departure errands). We’ve had free and relatively uninterrupted US-quality wifi access as well as unlimited (that being a relative term as we are Californians) clean potable water for our daily needs.  We have plenty of electricity (AC and DC when we are on shore power) and are truly lacking nothing but a freezer, as compared to our land-based life, and that is purely by choice. (As it turns out, our freezer, when not turned on, is the perfect temperature for fresh produce, beer, wine and bread–our much preferred amenities to frozen foods!)

For now, we are quite happy on Dakota as we make final preparations for our departure. Pray tell, one might ask, what on earth is taking so long to depart?? Well…..my first lesson in cruising preparations is this: The list of shit to do is everlasting and looonnnggg and every single project takes gads too long to complete because it is a boat.  Remember when you got married? Or had a baby? (or threw a baby shower?)  And you thought, “damn, they are charging me to the moon and back because it’s a “wedding” or a “baby.””  Same thing with a boat.  Anything “marine” or “waterproof” or on a boat is ridiculously cumbersome and expensive.  What exactly do I mean?  Let me provide a colorful example:

See this bad boy?

It’s our new Viking 6-man life raft (self-righting, no less! Ain’t no one got time to flip a capsized life raft under life-or-death circumstances!) Well, I suppose you can’t see much, because 2 major things, sorry 3 major things, have happened to make this simple, innocuous object appear, as if by magic, on our deck:

1. We had to buy the thing.  Sounds simple, right?  But have you not met my husband? This poor soul must research, like a beaten rug, the begeezus out of every possible life raft.  And then simmer each and every option because the thought of parting with that much cash (regardless of the fact that it is for something that will save our lives) is inordinately difficult for him. This goes on FOR MONTHS.  I shit you not, we began discussions on our life raft when we were still living in our land-based home. Like in the winter of 2015/16 and shit yo.   Fast forward to 3 weeks ago, in walks yours truly with said husband, to the warehouse in Alameda where we are to buy our dinghy/inflatable (more on that later) and our life raft,  after much pre-visit discussion about what we agreed to buy, and over many last-minute objections, I throw down the Amex and MAKE this purchase.  Cuz like seriously, my sweet husband is eeeeiinnng and awwwiinnng over spending the extra $500 for the self-righting life raft. Serrriiioouusslllyy.  I can’t take it. I’m like “Babe, I love you and I totally respect your experience and research on this, but I gotta make the call.  When the shit hits the fan, if we HAVE to pull the rip cord on this life raft and conditions suck balls, aren’t you gonna wish we sprang for the extra $500 life raft that rights itself?! Cuz I sure as shit, with 2 scared kids screaming and sopping wet after being dumped from a capsized life raft, in what I have to assume is a horrible storm of some sort, am gonna want that.”  God help him, he obliges.
2.  We had to install the life raft on our boat.  As I come to find out, there are 2 options here: mount it on the rails (my husband’s preferred method) or mount it on the deck.  Also, we have to make this decision blindly when we buy it because we kiinnnda didn’t think that part through, ya know, when we were eeeing and awwwing our options–we kinda didn’t remember to look at our set up and measure to see what option would work on our boat.  As one would expect, we bought all the extra parts for the rail mount, but afterwards discover (after we sail to Alameda and have it hauled on board, then sail back to our temporary slip) that a rail mount won’t work with our set up and we have to deck mount it. Aaannnddd, the only place it’ll work is right beneath the point where the mast meets the deck (I’m sure there is an official, nautical term for this space, but I don’t know it yet)… and that piece has to be, for all intents and purposes, surgically removed in order to install it.  AWESOME.   This little side project takes two days to finish, and let me assure you, involved its fair share of choice words, bloody knuckles, acetone-destroyed digits and plenty of bruises.  It also required middle-of-the-night work because after an entire day of keeping the family hostage on board with hammering, drilling and scraping, we/he decided that the best way to button this up was to finish it after the kids had gone to bed (Coyote Point’s punishing winds be damned!).
3. We have to get canvas covering made for it and installed.  Again, sounds simple right?  Sure, we went straight to the canvas-maker’s office right after we purchased it weeks ago, made the canvas selections, gave him the dimensions of the units and gave him the deposit he needed to get it started.  But, as with all things boat, it required much additional customization and thus additional appointments to get it made. First, Mr. Canvas-Maker needs to know where we are going to install it, i.e., a rail mount or a deck mount? This is apparently game-changing information. The first time he comes out, we don’t know yet. (oops!) We thought it was the rail, but after he told us he, like, *needed* to know in order to draft the canvas, we found ourselves with another middle-of-the-night project (needing placement decisions for the life raft and recalibrating the dinghy because he is making the canvas cover for the dinghy too. I know, sounds luxurious, but it’s actually a necessity in case we take a huge wave, so it doesn’t sink us, rip off our dinghy davits, or cause other damage!) Second, Mr. Canvas Maker needs us to sail back to Alameda (because it takes some time to sew all these canvas coverings!) for a fitting to make sure everything is as it needs to be.  Easy enough.  (Today’s appointment).  Finally (I hope), tomorrow he is set to come back to actually install all the canvas coverings we had him make (dinghy cover, life raft cover and a thingy for the boys’ shower–there’s no good way to explain it, but basically a thing that stops shit from falling when we are underway).

See what I mean? That gray boxy-looking thing on our deck was PAINSTAKINGLY purchased, installed and covered… and that little project was just completed today (after we sailed/motored to Alameda yet again).

That’s the kind of nitty-gritty shit that’s been taking up our time as of late.  As I’ve come to learn, it takes quite awhile to actually leave the dock, especially when we are fully entrenched in homeschooling (which means we gotta, like feed our kids, watch over them, be present of mind and be in charge of their general well-being, 24-7 with no school and no childcare, at the same time).

That said, we are very near the end of our preparations!! As much as we have all LOVED Alameda and particularly Encinal Yacht Club (we may have to join after this adventure!)… we truly *hope* that this is our last sail to Alameda for installations. And with the anticipated arrival of some important packages soon, we hope to be So-Cal bound sooner rather than later.

Until then, I take comfort in the fact that Dakota is looking more like a cruising vessel!  (try to forget that the mainsail is currently not installed, that’s our middle-of-the-night project for tonight!)

And one more for the road, because it’s too damn cute not to . . .

I’m finding it hard to grasp that we only have 23 days until we move out of our home. O. M. G.  I look around our home, currently staged and ready for rental showings, and think to myself, “how the hell am I going to pack up all this stuff and get it out of here in 23 days?!” If it was just a matter of packing and storing, I suppose, it would be a bit easier.  But we don’t plan to do that (we never do things the easy way… as I’m sure we will all see as we travel on Dakota!).  I have been slowly (veerrryyy slowly it seems) weeding stuff out and trying to get our possessions down to what we absolutely NEED.   I can’t take the overload of STUFF we have anymore.  It’s too much.

When we finally decided to tell everyone our plans to throw off the bowlines and go seek adventure aboard S/V Dakota for the next year (or so…), the first reaction we’ve usually received is one of surprise – “What?! O mi god! That’s amazing!” (yes, we agree, it is).  And the first question we get is “Aren’t you excited?!”  Well, yes. I suppose we are.  But for now, we are bogged down in the many many details of how to make it all happen.  Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful to have a very supportive spouse who understands that my need to organize and manage every detail is exactly that, a “need” and not a “want.”  And we are grateful to have the opportunity to reallocate financial resources such that we can plan to live off the passive income we recently created for the foreseeable future.  (Not without many late-night worries over whether it will carry us through, be enough to see us through the unexpected disasters and what the hell we’ll do when we get back…..but more on that another time).

See, we have quite a full and busy life, like most folks in our life situation do at this point in our family’s life.  We are (were) a two-working parent household with one school-aged child and one pre-preschooler child, both of whom are very busy and active little boys.  My husband and I both have demanding jobs that require that we either (a) be away from home much of the time or (b) work long hours or (c) both.  See, I am a lawyer in Big Law and he is an airline pilot.  The very nature of his job, despite the fact that he has, for the past few years, worked at headquarters in the airline’s training department, means that he must be gone.  We live in the suburbs of Sacramento (California) and he works in the Bay Area.  Sure, not unlike many folks we know.  But coupled with my demanding Big Law job downtown, it has traditionally equated to little, if any, quality family time, let alone time to create an entirely new life(style) from scratch complete with finances, homeschooling, cruising plans and preparations and the overwhelming job of shutting down our current life (for the time being).  As such, we haven’t had much time to get “excited.”  Rather, we’ve spent the last six months mired in big life decisions of:  how will we finance this pipe dream? Do we sell or rent our house? What about our beloved furry family members, Sadie and Guinness (meow)?  What do we do with all of our stuff? Store, sell, donate or trash?  And what about homeschooling (or boatschooling) our kids? How does that work? What are the legal state requirements? What must we do to figure that out? Who do we talk to? What resources do we need to gather now and what can be acquired while we are underway?  There are so many details to attend to and there has not been, until recently, time to digest the impact of each of these small, yet at the same time, very large, decisions.

So for now, the politically correct answer is “Yes, we are excited!” while internally we continue to grapple with all of these to-dos while at the same time trying to remain present and engaged in our current life with our boys.

Thankfully, I invested in, and relied very heavily on, and have been extremely committed to the action items I laid out in my Passion Planner (thank you!!), and have been able to knock out the key details that have needed to be managed over the past few months. However, as we near the final weeks and days to moving out of our stuff-laden family home, the anxiety and stress of dealing with not only the material “stuff” we have accumulated over the last 20+ years of couplehood and our 7+ years of parenthood have proven to be a monumental task that I find myself questioning my capacity to handle on any given day.

I hope that by the time we finally feel ready, whatever version of that we find comfort with by early September (our planned-for departure date), I get to experience the excitement that so many of our beloved friends and family have vested in us.

In the meantime, I’ll rely on my daily ritual of little quality sleep and double lattes paired with regular check-ins with my Passion Planner and daily to-do lists and hope that I’m able to knock out everything on my list in time to finally breath that sigh of relief, let the anticipation and stress go, and just BRREEAATTHHHE in that beautifully salty air.  Because in the end, what we hope to gain from this experience–a varied and rich quilt of experiences and memories as a young family–is absolutely worth it.